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Fallback Book Tour

Fallback

by Lori Whitwam

The Dead Survive, Book 2

ROOM WITH BOOKS encourages our readers to follow the tour and comment.

After being rescued from a brutal band of marauders, Ellen Hale rebuilt her life in the fortified neighborhood that became her home. A heartbreaking decision and devastating loss pushed her to become a fierce fighter, because weakness only got you and those you loved killed.

Now her community is facing a deadly threat, and Ellen has another choice to make.

Ellen volunteers as a member of fallback team three, tasked with establishing a temporary refuge for their citizens in the event their community is overrun by the enemy. As the danger intensifies, she and her adopted sister, Melissa, set off with the rest of their team on the road trip from hell.

Their mission is cloaked in secrecy, but suspicions of a traitor arise.

Something is affecting the zombies’ migration patterns, and when blacksmith Tyler Garrett is discovered trapped in a farmhouse, the team refuses to trust him. But Ellen believes his story, and it’s not just because of his rugged, blond good looks and soft-spoken manner—his skills can greatly benefit their team.

As the team struggles to reach the fallback, previously secure locations are overrun, and their chances of success seem remote. With the likelihood of a traitor nearly certain, and the lives of everyone she loves at risk, Ellen must figure out who to trust before the traitor—or the zombies—destroy them all.

Is there a spy among the fallback team,or is there another threat lurking in the Kentucky hills?

Chapter Two

There was a goat on the roof of the chicken coop. I had come out to the back yard with the intention of gathering the eggs from the laying boxes, but I had concerns about being leapt upon by a billy goat with a panther delusion.

I put down the basket intended for the eggs and picked up a rake I found leaning against the wall by the patio door. I was trying to envision the most effective way to get a goat-panther off my chicken coop with what amounted to a long stick when my roommate, Bethany, entered the yard through the side gate.

“Hey, Ellen, we…” She stopped at the edge of the patio, and her brows drew together. “Um, why do you look like you’re about to commit murder with a rake?”

I nodded toward the chicken coop. “Goat,” I said succinctly.

“Me-e-e-e-h,” the goat bleated. A half-dozen nanny goats milled about the structure, gazing up at their communal boyfriend like teenage girls at a boy band concert.

Bethany brushed the uneven fringe of her short, white-blonde hair out of her eyes and gaped. “Holy shit. How’d he get up there?”

I leaned on the rake. “I’m guessing the wood pile behind the coop needs to be moved. I had no idea goats were so…springy.”

I hadn’t exactly planned to be a goat-keeper, but with the pending threat of marauders, we’d spent the last two days moving livestock from fenced pastures outside the Compound and inside the relative safety of our reinforced walls. While the whole subdivision was now enclosed, the only grassy, fenced areas inside were our training field and a few dozen individual yards. The training field was now subdivided and holding horses and cows, and the goats had been parceled out among the homes with fenced back yards.

“Huh.” Bethany dropped into a lawn chair, still studying the goat, which was currently chewing on a loose shingle. “Well, I’m guessing knocking him off the roof with a stick isn’t the way to go.”

“Probably not.” Too bad. I had a lot to do, and I resented his interference in my plans.

Lori spent her early years reading books in a tree in northern West Virginia. The 1980s and 90s found her and her husband moving around the Midwest, mainly because it was easier to move than clean the apartment. After seventeen frigid years in Minnesota, she fled to coastal North Carolina in 2013. She will never leave, and if you try to make her, she will hurt you.

She has worked in public libraries, written advertising copy for wastewater treatment equipment, and managed a holistic veterinary clinic. Her current day job, conducted from her World Headquarters and Petting Zoo (her couch) is as Managing Editor for Limitless Publishing, as well as editing for a select list of indie author.

Her dogs are a big part of her life, and she has served or held offices in Golden Retriever and Great Pyrenees rescues, a humane society, a county kennel club, and her own chapter of Therapy Dogs International.

She has been a columnist and feature writer for auto racing and pet publications, and won the Dog Writers Association of America’s Maxwell Award for a series of humor essays.

Parents of a grown son, Lori and her husband were high school sweethearts, and he manages to love her in spite of herself. Some of his duties include making sure she always has fresh coffee and safe tires, trying to teach her to use coupons, and convincing the state police to spring her from house arrest in her hotel room in time for a very important concert. That last one only happened once—so far—but she still really, really appreciates it.

Lori will be awarding one prize pack consisting of $25 Amazon/B&N gift card, plus a signed print copy of Fallback, as well as bookmarks and magnets (international) to one randomly drawn winner via Rafflecopter during the tour.